Past projects

Instrument Menagerie and Family Concerts

The first instrument menagerie took place on the final day of Undream’d Shores performances at the Hackney Empire as part of the national Family Arts Festival. It was designed for young families and was a tangible, visual introduction to all the different musical instruments that they would encounter in the family matinee performance of Undream’d Shores that would follow. The menagerie and family concerts have been regularly replicated in many parts of the UK ever since.

Music Untamed

Music Untamed gives a chance to older children to get involved with the rarity and wildness of Grand Union and its musics, adding workshops to the menagerie and family performance through which young people and their families can see every possible side to the Grand Union Orchestra. Better still, they can be involved in massive events like this one in Croydon's Fairfield Halls (March 2016):

What the River Sings (2012)

As part of the BBC's Music Nation Weekend, the Grand Union Youth Orchestra takes to the stage of Trinity Buoy Wharf to perform alongside the Grand Union Orchestra, the Water City Festival Orchestra and East London choirs in a very special show, devised by Tony Haynes and based around Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade.

On Liberation Street (2005-7)

On Liberation Street, was given its premiere performances at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds November 12th. It was enormously successful, combining the majesty of Where the Rivers Meet and the visceral energy of Doctor Carnival with a new passion and intensity, and raising the cross-cultural participatory show to an ever-higher level of professional polish and artistic quality. It included a wide range of young people from different cultural and musical backgrounds with small ensembles of various musical difficulties.

7 minutes of breathtaking excerpts from On Liberation Street at the Hackney Empire Theatre, March 2009, featuring the Grand Union Orchestra and an astonishing array of guest performers from across East London.